


i held you closer than anyone would ever get

by humanluke



Series: cake projection series [1]
Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, M/M, Mentions of Cancer, and i can't live knowing i'm the only one to see it, i'm sorry i wrote this but i needed it off my chest, just pure pain honestly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:41:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27105136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/humanluke/pseuds/humanluke
Summary: It all happened so fast, he didn’t even have time to breathe while they sat there in the office.  It was so out of left field, so shocking to both of them, they didn’t even know where to begin to think of what to do.  The doctor had left them to talk about choices, talk about where to go from here, to give them a moment to collect themselves as they sat in the uncomfortable chairs in the exam room.
Relationships: Luke Hemmings/Calum Hood
Series: cake projection series [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2113335
Comments: 1
Kudos: 18





	i held you closer than anyone would ever get

**Author's Note:**

> SO!!! my friends in the club know about this and i wrote this because i lived this exact scenario with my now late fiance. this is how i coped with all of the feelings that have been bubbling inside of me for the last 5 months and it is liberating to be able to share them. thank you to everyone in the club for letting me ramble about this (even if they don't read which is FINE because who would want to torture themselves this way??? just me!!!!!!!!!! come visit me on [tumblr](http://cakelftv.tumblr.com) and yell at me for this if you feel so obliged

_It all happened so fast, he didn’t even have time to breathe while they sat there in the office. It was so out of left field, so shocking to both of them, they didn’t even know where to begin to think of what to do. The doctor had left them to talk about choices, talk about where to go from here, to give them a moment to collect themselves as they sat in the uncomfortable chairs in the exam room._

_The second that the doctor stepped out of the room, Luke burst into tears, almost as if opening a floodgate. He hadn’t known, hadn’t expected, if only he’d seen it coming sooner, if only they’d **caught it** … There were so many unknowns, so many factors that had come into play. You’re young, the doctor had said to them, but her face had been somber, as if she knew what was coming. Knew there was really no coming back from this. Only pushing away the inevitable. _

_Only delaying the slow death that the cancer would bring along with it._

_He’d asked Calum to quit time and time again, told him before it wasn’t healthy for him to be smoking like that. Calum always laughed it off, claimed his other lifestyle choices would balance it out. Said that he had nothing to worry about._

_How simply wrong he was about that._

_It was already in stage three, which meant he didn’t have much time left if he was lucky with treatment options. A few years at best. Luke was devastated -- he didn’t want a few years. He’d wanted a **lifetime** with Calum, a forever. They had only been officially dating for less than a year, and this was the hand they’d been dealt._

_He was starting to think that the universe was out to get him._

_Calum’s hand soothed over Luke’s back, shushing him softly. “Hey, it’ll be okay, we’re going to get through this,” he coos to him. He’s trying to fight back tears too, suddenly face to face with his mortality in a way he’d never had to be before. “We’ve gotten through plenty, we can handle this too…” Luke couldn’t find the words, was grasping at straws to even begin to wrap his brain around it._

_**Cancer** was such a scary word. It shook him to his very core as he slowly started to piece together what was actually happening to them. His whole world had just been smashed to pieces. All the dreams, the plans, the everything had just been burned to the ground with those few little words. You have cancer. He just looks over to Calum, his whole face hurt and confused and he just presses his face into his chest. He breathes in his smell, thinking about how he doesn’t know what he’s going to do when he’s gone. _

_“Hey, I’m still here, I’m tougher than this,” Calum reiterates. “I’m going to go kicking and screaming if I have to, okay?” He chuckles softly, trying to lighten the somber mood, but Luke isn’t having it. He just fists at Calum’s shirt, pulls him closer. He doesn’t ever want to have to let him go. “No matter what, I still love you, okay?”_

_Those words just hit him harder, Luke’s body shaking as he managed to pull back. His face was wet with tears, and Calum just wipes them away as best he can with a soft smile, carding a hand through Luke’s soft curls as he presses a kiss to his forehead._

_“I love you too,” he manages through tears, and he can only imagine how much of a disaster he looks like right now in this moment. “I love you so much… fuck, Calum…” The waterworks are building again, and Calum just pulls him closer again, rocking with him slowly as he whispers promises to him that he knows that he can’t keep._

\--

That scene replays in Luke’s head over and over again as he sits next to the hospital bed two years later, Calum’s hand firmly in his own. 

He looks disdainfully over all the equipment hooked up to him, watching the steady beating of his heart on the lcd monitor. The sound of it is almost therapeutic to him at this point. He’s sat here for days it feels like now, Ashton and Michael stopping by to make sure he’s okay, checking in for updates. Calum’s family has been by too, more often than not, but Luke has not moved from his spot save for when the nurses told him he needed to get some fresh air. 

This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. His thumb runs over Calum’s wedding ring, having eloped after the news they’d received all those months ago. He thinks of all the trips they were supposed to take, kids they would adopt, how they were supposed to grow old together… He sighs as he bites his bottom lip into his mouth, fighting back the tears that are welling up in his eyes. Not again, he reminds himself. Not now. Not yet. 

The doctors had been in not an hour ago, and it had spread too far and too harshly for them to do anything at this point. The best thing they could do was wait for his family to get there, and to let him go. Luke didn’t want him to go -- he wanted to scream and yell and fight them over how they weren’t trying. He knew that wasn’t true -- the doctors had been doing everything in their power to keep Calum going. 

They’d had a good last year until the last few weeks -- they’d gotten married, they moved in together. Adopted two dogs together. They were their own little family in their own right. Luke brought Calum to all of his treatments, sat with him and kept him company for those long hours, took care of him when he was sick. Was unwavering by his side when he went in for surgeries and procedures and tests.

But Luke was tired, too. Tired of cleaning up the messes, tired of the constant carrying of Calum all the time. He hates himself for it a little bit, but he knows it’s only human. One can only handle so much of a load before they start to crack underneath the pressure. He’d cried to Calum about it a few days before he’d been admitted to the hospital, about how he was tired. Calum had cried too, about how afraid he was of his mortality. About how he didn’t want to die. 

But here they were, standing on the precipice of life and death. Calum was about to go, his body too battered and beaten to last any longer under the duress of this awful disease. 

And Luke was about to be freed from his curse of caring for him. 

It made Luke’s heart twinge, and he feels selfish for even letting the thought cross his mind now. He loved Calum with every single fiber of his being. But he knew it was right to let him go. He wasn’t going to last long as it was, and it was better to let him go without suffering than to watch him like this anymore. 

Making the decision to end your partner’s life isn’t an easy one, and Luke hated that he’d had to make that call. But he knew, despite Calum’s wishes, that he wouldn’t want to suffer.

He was barely there anymore anyways, so out of it on ativan and dilaudid that he was a shell of anyone. Stuck on oxygen, too weak to do anything for himself. This wasn’t a life. He wasn’t living. He was just existing, and that was no way to let yourself be remembered. 

It was almost a blur when Calum’s parents got there, along with his sister. He resigned himself to the hallway for a few minutes, letting them have some time with him before he had to go. Luke had gotten so much time with him over the last few years, it was the least that he could do. He could give them that little moment of alone time with him, that slice to hold on to when he was gone. The goodbyes are always hard, he thinks. Not that he knows, he hasn’t dealt with losing someone on this scale yet. But he assumed as much. He knew that it was hard. It’s why he’s been sitting here in this room in the ICU for the past 5 days. 

Mali is the one who comes to get him from the hallway. Her eyes are red and glassy, and he knows that he’s going to crumble within a moment’s notice. He’s trying to be strong, like he’s been for the last two years. But holding this facade is as tiring as it was caring for Calum every day. And he’s exhausted from it all. 

He steps back into the sterile room, and looks at Calum in that hospital bed. He looks so peaceful, so calm as he sleeps. Luke wonders briefly if dying is like falling asleep, or if it’s something else entirely. He knows Calum and his family are fairly spiritual, and that he’s encountered spirits (or so he claims), but Luke doesn’t know what he believes. He just knows he wishes he’d had more time. 

Luke takes his seat back next to him, taking his hand back into his own as the nurses come back into the room. They talk with Cal’s family a little bit, and he’s sure they address him too, but he’s too focused on watching him. He doesn’t want to miss any moment he has left with him, even if it’s one sided. He just looks over his face, memorizing every line, every crevice, every inch of him, as if tattooing it to the inside of his brain. He doesn’t want to forget. He can never forget.

It’s quick when he goes. 

They give him another dose of his medications, which he’d dazedly asked for a few minutes beforehand. Luke watched as he looked around the room, observing everyone there, and Luke’s certain he knew what was happening by the somber energy in the room, and he’d resigned himself back to sleep. Luke thinks about how that’s the last time he would look into Calum’s eyes, and doesn’t dwell on it for too long, because he knows he’ll be a mess before he knows it. 

He settles after the dose put into his iv, settling back into his sleep. They look at each other for a moment, Luke and David and Mali and Joy, and they’re all quiet for a moment. The calm before the storm. They take a few minutes before they’re ready (but they’re not ready, you’re never ready to lose a sibling, a lover, a child.) Then they let the nurses unhook everything -- the iv, the oxygen. Only the LCD monitor is left, a beeping reminder as it slows, and Calum gasps for breath for a few moments before he stops altogether. 

It takes Luke a minute before he fully registers what’s happening, and he’s brought back to that moment in that doctor’s office with Calum. How he’d promised him so much and life just didn’t allow him to deliver. 

He lets his tears fall, rapidly after a moment, the sobs wracking his body as he presses his lips to Calum’s limp hand. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “God, I’m so fucking sorry…” 

They all sit like that in their sadness for a while, the nurses coming in and his parents going off to regrettably discuss funeral plans. It’s cruel, how you have to do so much when you’re grieving. But that’s just life, Luke thinks. He sends the confirmation off to Ashton and Michael, bombarded with questions and apologies and ‘is there anything we can do?’s. It falls on deaf ears, and he just tells them that he’ll let them know. But he knows he won’t, and he knows they’ll be there for him regardless anyways. 

He’s the last one to leave, almost an hour later, Calum’s belongings from his stay with him. He thinks about how he has to go home to their house, to their home, and be reminded of him everywhere he turns, and he barely makes it out to the car before he breaks down again. He hurts everywhere, all over, his heart feeling like it's about to burst apart in his chest because he just wants to turn back time and fix it all. 

He knows it’s not possible, of course he does, but he wishes nonetheless. He would give the world for another day, another week, another year, another second to hear Calum laugh, see him smile, hold his hand. He looks at his hand, Calum’s ring that was too big for his own fingers dangling on his middle finger a little, and he just holds it close to his breaking heart.

And so he drives home, burdened with the loss of his love, playing the scene over and over in his head until he’s sure he’ll be sick of it.

But he never gets sick of it. He could never be sick of Calum.


End file.
